This concept of a “mother” is prevalent in the drag community. She shares this maternal quality with best friend and bingo night co host Kailee Mykels. I encouraged her to order anything she wanted on a company card that doesn’t exist. We had a shot of tequila, and another one. I asked for a window seat and ordered every kind of seafood I could find on the happy hour menu. I got in touch with Venus Anne Sexton that very day, and she agreed to meet me for martinis at 17th Ave Grill. Now, on any given night, a visitor of Charlie’s can enjoy two-step lessons, dance music, bingo hosted by drag queens, or on some nights, a full-fledged drag show. The nightclub was once host to a restaurant with a 72 item menu, off which patrons ordered dishes like prime rib and frog legs.Įventually, the second dance floor took place of the restaurant, and Charlie’s took an all-inclusive stance, playing modern dance music on one floor, and country on the other.ĭrag gained in popularity, and Charlie’s made room for that aspect of the community as well. “How could a gay bar survive that supported tequila over drugs, courting before sex, and even touch dancing, in these modern days of 1981? Everybody knew that those hats, Wranglers, and strange belt buckles had gone out of style for 30 years.”Ĭharlie’s was all country music and line dancing for years. The Charlie’s Denver website features a small write up by owner John King in which he takes a moment to acknowledge this. John is a gay cowboy, a transplant from a small Midwestern town, who found a safe haven at Charlie’s.Įven in the 80’s, Charlie’s was the weird stepchild of the gay community. Once John warms up to me, he tells me about the history of Charlie’s (open 36 years), about the foundation of the International Gay Rodeo (started right here in Aurora Colorado by Charlie’s owner and management), and about how instrumental Charlie’s was in politics concerning gay rights in Colorado. If only the Miller Lites were specialty cocktails and the porch was an empty night club and the sun was actually multicolored dance floor lights being reflected off a cowboy boot shaped disco ball.
I listen to John talk baseball with these two older gentlemen, which fills me with nostalgia for my own grandpa and uncles on a Sunday talking sports over Miller Lites on the sun porch. Long-time manager John Nelms pulled two special bar stools with back support out of the abyss and set them up at their special spot at the bar twenty minutes before they were due to arrive. They can be expected at the bar at this time every day. Their names are Tom and Harold, and they’re what I assume to be the bar’s most fancied regulars. However, at noon on a Wednesday, the most shocking characters are the two older gay men across the bar, who won’t let me talk to them or take their picture. And all the kids are in their early 30’s. Later I would find out that when Charlie’s is bumping with business, it still feels like a haunted house, but all the kids are dressed up as Woody from Toy Story, David Bowie, or Queen Latifah. In the evening, it feels more like a small town haunted house, haphazardly thrown up by local dads to entertain sticky-handed kids in superhero costumes.
In the back, there’s an entrance that leads to an expansive patio with more wooden benches, its own outdoor bars, and a fire pit.Īll wood and little embellishment give the empty night club a country barn quality. A level up, there are a couple of pool tables. It’s all wooden floors and wooden benches which surround two dance floors.
The bar doesn’t look like much from the outside, no windows look in from Colfax, there’s no visible patio, just a side door that enters into the sprawling interior. I stopped by around noon on a Wednesday to scope everything out. The first time I see one of Charlie’s house drag queens, Venus Anne Sexton, is on a poster that is hanging above my barstool at the u-shaped bar. However, this will be my only experience over the course of two weeks that lives up to this stereotype. “Oh yeah, I’m writing a story about Charlie’s,”ĭrag queens have a reputation, especially within their own community, as being ruthless and bitchy. I don’t know what he’s talking about at first. At the sink, my backpack hangs open, and the gay man standing behind me in the women’s room peers in and spots my notebook. This isn’t the first dive-y bathroom I’ve been in on Colfax, and so far, I think the best places have the worst bathrooms. I’m in a dark bathroom stall at Charlie’s Nightclub on a busy Sunday drag show night.